I hope this is not going to be embarrassing. If so, it is not my fault. This is history, please remember, not fiction. I wanted--I am obliged to say it--pyjamas for winter wear. I know all about pyjamas for summer wear; what I wanted was pyjamas for winter wear, and I decided that Agnes should make them. For years I have been trying to get proper pyjamas--by which I mean pyjamas properly made--but the haberdasher always smiles depreciation and tells me that the goods he offers me are what are always worn. Quite so; but what I say is that out of bed and for the purpose of having your photograph taken Trade pyjamas are all right; but that in bed they commit untold offences. I enter my bed clothed; I settle down in it half-naked. The jacket has run up to my arm-pits; my legs are bare to the knee; my arms to the elbows; the loosely buttoned front is ruckled up into a funnel, down which, whenever I move, the bedclothes like a bellows draw a chill blast of air on to that particular part of my chest which is designed for catching colds. When I turn over in my dreams I wake to find myself tied as with ropes. Slumber's chains have indeed bound me. I am a man in the clothing of a nightmare. The cold, cold sheets catch me in the most ticklesome delicacies of my back and make me jump again. Enough. "Well," said Agnes, "if I am going to make your pyjamas you must tell me exactly what you want." "My pyjamas," I said, "shall be buttoned round the ankle and capacious below the waist--there I ask a Turkish touch. The jacket shall be buttoned at the wrists and baggy at the shoulder; at the chest it shall strap me across like an R.F.C. tunic, and it shall be securely clipped to the trousers." "Why not have it all in one?" "What!" I cried, "and parade hotel passages in search of the bath looking like a clown out of a circus? No, thank you." "You must make me a pattern then," said Agnes, "or I shan't know what to do." I can't make patterns, but I can, and I did, make plans of ground and first-floor levels, a section and back and front elevations, all to a scale of one inch to the foot exactly. I also made a full-size detail of a toggle-and-cinch gear linking the upper storey to the lower. "I think," Agnes said, "you had better come to the shop and choose the material." I thought so too. I wanted something gaudy that would make me feel cheerful when I woke in the morning; but I also had another idea in my mind. _Mangle-proof buttons_! Have the things been invented yet? The archbishop who attended to us deprecated the idea of india-rubber buttons. "What kind are you now using?" he asked solicitously. "At present, on No. 2," I said, "I am using splinters of mother-of-pearl. Last week, with No. 1, I used a steel ring hanging by its rim to a shred of linen, two safeties, and a hairpin found on the floor."